A UNIQUE EXPERIMENT
"Bearing?" Tom cried.
"One-seven-five!" Arv Hanson sang out.
Tom gunned his port jet turbine and swung the _Swiftsure_ hard right.
The abrupt turn at high speed sent the craft sideslipping crazily like a
skidding race boat.
"Here she comes, skipper!" Bud yelled. He had rushed to the sonarscope
with the other members of the crew.
Tom's maneuver had carried them a good hundred yards off the missile's
course. Now he yanked a lever, pulling the cadmium rods still farther
from the atomic pile, in order to increase power and jet-blast their sub
still farther out of range.
But suddenly the men at the scope blanched. "The missile's turning too!"
Hank cried. "It's homing in on us!"
Unlike most Swift craft used on scientific expeditions, the cargo sub's
hull had not been coated with Tomasite. This would have insulated it
from all magnetic effects or any form of pulse detection. Tom had chosen
the _Swiftsure_ partly for this very reason, so that the Brungarian
rebels could easily pick up its trail after leaving Fearing.
How ironic if his choice should prove fatal! As the thought flashed
through Tom's brain, the missile came streaking into view through the
sub's transparent nose.
By this time, Tom had flipped up the _Swiftsure's_ diving planes. The
craft plummeted deeper into the ocean depths.
"Brand my whale blubber, she's turnin' again!" Chow gulped. The
missile's arc, as it veered around to follow, painted a streak of light
on the sonarscope.
Anxious moments raced by while Tom steered their craft in a deadly game
of tag with the sub-killer. Gradually the missile appeared to be losing
momentum.
"It's slowing down, all right!" Arv called out.
In a few minutes the missile had lost so much way that Tom was easily
able to outdistance it. The crew crowded to the scope, heaving sighs of
relief. The missile, its velocity spent, sank harmlessly toward the
bottom.
"Boy, what a close call!" Bud gasped weakly. "You played that thing like
a toreador sidestepping a bull, Tom! Nice going!"
The others echoed Bud's sentiments, with fervent handshakes and
backslaps for Tom's skillful evasive action.
"Jest the same," said Chow, "I'd sure like to make Narko an' them
Brungarian hoss thieves dance a Texas jig with a little hot lead sprayed
around their boot heels! Sneakin' bushwhackers! It's jest like I told
Hank about his airplane scheme--they'd try to gun us down, like as not,
soon as they got their hands on Exman!"
"I guess you had them figured right, Chow," Tom agreed wryly. "Well, at
least we've lost their sub!"
The Brungarian raider was no longer visible even as a faint blip on
their radarscope. Evidently Narko had thought the jetmarine a sure
victim and headed back to his own base.
Nevertheless, Tom steered a wary zigzag course back to Fearing. When
they arrived at the island, he immediately telephoned Bernt Ahlgren and
Wes Norris in Washington to report the hijacking of the space brain.
Both men praised the young inventor for his daring scheme to outwit the
ruthless Brungarian rebel clique.
"If your idea pays off, Tom, we should be able to checkmate every move
those phonies and their allies make!" Norris declared.
"I'm hoping we can do even better than that," Tom replied. "Part of my
plan is to help the Brungarian loyalists through Exman's tip-offs. With
some smart quarterbacking, we might be able to rally the rightful
government before all resistance is crushed out."
"Terrific!" Norris exclaimed. "Let's hope your scheme works!"
Tom had ordered the space oscilloscopes to be manned constantly, both at
Fearing and at Enterprises, in case of a flash from Exman. But no word
had yet been received when Tom and his companions arrived at the
mainland late that afternoon.
Mr. Swift greeted his son warmly at the airfield. Tom had refrained from
radioing the news to Enterprises after the hijacking and the missile
attempt. Any such message, Tom feared, might be picked up by the enemy
and bring on another attack. But the young inventor had telephoned his
father immediately after calling Washington.
Now Mr. Swift threw his arm affectionately around the lanky youth. "You
look pretty well bushed, son. Why not hustle home and call it a day?
That goes for the rest of you, too," he added to Bud, Chow, and the
others. "You've just risked your lives and the strain is bound to tell."
Tom urged his companions to comply. "But I'm sticking right here," the
young inventor told his father. "I want to be on hand the minute Exman
contacts us."
Bud insisted upon staying with his pal. The two boys ate a quiet supper
in Tom's private laboratory and finally lay down on cots in the
adjoining apartment. But first Tom posted a night operator to watch the
electronic brain.
"Wake me up the second that alarm bell goes off," he ordered.
"Okay, skipper," the radioman promised.
No message arrived to disturb the boys' rest. Tom felt a pang of worry
as he dressed the next morning, and then relieved the man on duty at the
decoder. Had the Brungarians somehow outwitted him? Surely Exman should
have reported by this time!
"Relax, pal," Bud urged. "Our space chum's hardly had time to learn any
secrets yet. Besides, those Brungarian scientists are probably giving
him the once-over with all sorts of electronic doodads. Why risk sending
a message till he has something important to tell us?"
"That's true," Tom admitted.
Chow brought in breakfast. "You jest tie into these vittles, boss, an'
stop frettin'," the cook said soothingly. "I reckon Ole Think Box won't
let us down."
Tom sniffed the appetizing aroma of flapjacks and sausages. "Guess
you're right, Chow," he said with a chuckle.
As the boys ate hungrily, Tom's thoughts turned back to the problem of
how to equip Exman with senses. He talked the project over with Bud.
Most of his ideas were too technical for Bud to follow, but he listened
attentively. He knew the young inventor found it helpful to have a
"sounding board" for his ideas.
"Too bad I didn't have time to tackle the job before Exman was
kidnaped," Tom mused. "Think how much more he could learn with 'eyes'
and 'ears'!"
"Stop crabbing," Bud joked. "Isn't an electronic spy with a brain like
Einstein's good enough?"
Mr. Swift arrived at the laboratory an hour or so later. He found Tom
setting up an experiment with a glass sphere to which were affixed six
powerful electromagnets. Two shiny electrodes, with cables attached to
their outer ends, had also been molded into the glass. Bud was looking
on, wide-eyed.
Tom explained to his father that he had blown the sphere himself,
following a formula adapted from the quartz glass used for view panels
in his space and undersea craft.
"What's it for, son?" Mr. Swift asked, after studying the setup
curiously.
"Don't laugh, Dad, but I'm trying to produce a brain of pure energy. A
substitute for Exman, so we can go ahead with our sensing experiments."
Mr. Swift reacted with keen interest and offered to help. "But remember,
son," he cautioned, "at best you can only hope to produce an ersatz
brain energy--which will be vastly different from the real thing. Don't
forget, Tom, the mind of a human being or any thinking inhabitant of our
universe is based on a divine soul. No scientist must ever delude
himself into thinking he can copy the work of our Creator."
"I know that, Dad," Tom said soberly. "Man's work will always be a crude
groping, compared to the miracles of Nature. All I'm hoping to come up
with here is a sort of stimulus-response unit that we can use for
testing any sensing apparatus we devise."
The two scientists plunged into work. First, a bank of delicate gauges
was assembled to record precisely every electrical reaction that took
place inside the sphere. Then Tom threw a switch, shooting a powerful
bolt of current across the electrodes. The field strength of the
electromagnets, controlled by rheostats, instantly shaped the charge
into a glowing ball of fire!
"Wow! A real hothead!" Bud wisecracked, trying to hide his excitement.
Tom grinned as he twirled several knobs and checked the gauges. The
slightest variation in field strength triggered an instant response from
the ball of energy. Mr. Swift tried exposing it to radio and repelatron
waves. Each time the gauges showed a sensitive reaction.
"Looks as if we're in business, Dad!" Tom said jubilantly.
Bud left soon afterward as the two Swifts buckled down to work on the
problem of perfecting an apparatus to simulate the human senses. Each
concentrated on a different line of approach.
At noon they broke off briefly for a lunch wheeled in by Chow. Then
silence settled again over the laboratory.
Tom had rigged up a jointed, clawlike mechanical arrangement with
sensitive diaphragms in its "finger tips." The diaphragms were connected
to a transistorized circuit designed to modulate the field current to
the electromagnets.
Suddenly the young inventor looked up at his father with a glow of
triumph.
"Dad, I just got a reaction to my sense-of-touch experiment!"